Extractive Activities

The IASB's Extractive Activities project aims to resolve the issues that are unique to upstream extractive activities. 

History of the project

In 2002 the IASB decided that it was not feasible to complete a comprehensive project on accounting for extractive activities in time for IFRS adoption in 2005. Consequently, in 2004, the IASB issued an interim standard IFRS 6. 

Recent developments

In February 2018, following its discussion on 2015 Agenda Consultation, the IASB re-started its work on the Accounting Standard. In September 2021, the IASB tentatively decided that the project’s scope and objectives should be to explore two aspects of IFRS 6:

• developing requirements or guidance to improve the disclosure objectives and requirements about an entity’s exploration and evaluation (E&E) expenditure and activities to provide more useful information to primary users of financial statements;
• removing the temporary status of IFRS 6.

Update

Through outreach, the IASB found that the diversity in practice regarding extractive activities was not hindering investor decision-making and it was at a level that could be tolerated by the market. Thus, the IASB terminated the extractive activities project.